THE MEANING OF PLURACTIONALITY IN KARITIANA*
Ana Müller (USP/CNPq) & Luciana Sanchez-Mendes (USP/FAPESP)
[email protected], www.fflch.usp.br/dl/anamuller
[email protected]
1.
Introduction
This paper focuses on the meaning of pluractional affixes in Karitiana. Karitiana is the
sole surviving language of the Arikén family, Tupi stock. It is spoken by about 350
people that live in a reservation located to the south of Porto Velho in the northwest of
Brazil in the state of Rondônia (cf. Storto 1999). The paper deals with the following
questions: (i) what is the meaning of pluralization in Karitiana?; (iii) how does the array
of readings available for Karitiana sentences arise?
Karitiana is a pluractional language - it makes use of pluractional markers. These
markers are verbal affixes that indicate that a multiplicity of events has occurred (cf.
Lasersohn 1995). The language has no Determiner Quantifiers, that is, it has no
quantifiers that belong in the nominal phrase. Quantifiers in Karitiana are adverbial in
that they either take scope over the predicate or the whole sentence (cf. Müller et al
2006).
Our account will assume as background The Cumulativity Universal, as proposed in
Kratzer 2005. This universal claims that the denotations of all simple predicates in
natural languages are cumulative (cf. Krifka 1986, Landmann 1996, Kratzer 2001). The
account will be laid out within an event semantics - VPs are assumed to have an event
We thank to Luciana Storto for her help with the elicitation and analysis of the Karitiana data. Without
her this work would not be possible. We also thank our consultant Inácio Karitiana. The authors thank
*
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argument (cf. Davidson 1967, Parsons 1990, Schein 1993, Lasersohn 1995, among
others).
The paper claims that pluractional affixes are PLural operators on cumulative verb
denotations in Karitiana and that the multiplicity of participants readings for both
pluractional and quantified sentences is a result of cumulativity plus entailments and/or
implicatures.
2.
Noun Phrases and Quantification in Karitiana
Karitiana is a verb final language. There is a complementary distribution between
embedded and matrix clauses with respect to the position of the verb. Matrix sentences
are verb-initial (VOS, VSO) or verb-second (SVO, OVS), whereas embedded clauses are
always verb-final (OSV, SOV). Movement of the verb in matrix clauses is related to the
presence of agreement and tense, which are totally absent in dependent clauses (cf.
Storto 1999, 2003). In spite of the fact that noun phrases are not marked for case in
Karitiana, its Case pattern is ergative-absolutive, in that intransitive verbs agree with
their subjects, and transitive verbs agree with their direct objects. This pattern is
characteristic of Tupi languages in general.
In Karitiana, noun phrases are not marked for (in)definiteness, nor for singular/plural,
as illustrated by the many possible interpretations of sentence (1). There is no
morphosyntactic marker for number within the NP. In sentence (2) below, the phrase
myhint pikom ('one monkey') is semantically singular, while in sentence (3) the phrase
sypomp pikom ('two monkeys') is semantically plural. However, both noun phrases
CNPq and FAPESP for financial support.
2
(NPs) remain uninflected for number in the two contexts. These two sentences also
show that Karitiana makes no use of numeral classifiers.
(1)
Taso
naka'yt
boroja 1
taso
naka-'yt
boroja
man
DECL-eat-NFUT
snake
'(The/a/some) man/men ate (the/a/some) snake(s)'
(2)
Yn
naka'yt
myhint
pikom
yn
Ø-naka-'y-t myhin-t
pikom
1S
3-DECL-eat-NFUT
one-OBL
monkey
ypomp
pikom
'I ate a/some monkey(s)'
(3)
Yn
naka'yt
s
yn
Ø-naka-'y-t
sypom-t
pikom
1S
3-DECL-eat-NFUT
two-OBL
monkey
'I ate two monkeys'
Universal quantification and demonstrative functions are not expressed by determiners
but by subordinate clauses as shown in sentences (4) and (5). In sentence (4) the
quantified interpretation is achieved by a subordinate clause composed by the verb to
Glosses are as follows: 1st line: orthographic transcription, 2nd line: morphological
segmentation. Symbols used: NFUT= non future, AUX = auxiliar, PART = participle, REDUPL
= reduplication, DECL = declarative, CAUS = causative, SG = singular, PL = plural, NEG =
negation, 3 = 3rd person, 1S = 1st person singular, FUT = future, EXIST = existencial,
3ANAPH = 3rd person anaphoric prefix, SUB = subordinator, ASSERT = assertative, POS =
posposition, PASS = passive, OBL = oblique sufix, VERB = verbalizer.
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3
be and a subordinator. And the demonstrative meaning is achieved by a constituent
made of a locative the noun and the verb to be, as can be seen in sentence (5).
(4)
Pikom
akatyym
naponpon
João
pikom
aka-tyym
Ø-na-pon-pon-Ø
João
monkey
be-SUB
3-DECL-shoot-REDUPL-NFUT João
'João shot at all the monkeys'
Literally: 'João shot at the monkeys that are'
(5)
Ony
sojxaty
aka
kyn
nakapon
João.
ony
sojxaty
aka
kyn
Ø-naka-pon-Ø
João
be
at
3-DECL-shoot- NFUT João
there boar
'João shot at that boar'
Literally: ‘João shot at the boar (that) be there.’
In languages such as English, quantifiers such as every, much and nobody belong in the
nominal constituent, as illustrated by the contrast between sentences (6) and (7). These
quantifying expressions occupy functional positions in the determiner phrase (DP).
(6)
John shot at [every wild boar]
(7)
[Every wild boar] was shot
Karitiana does not seem to have determiner quantifiers in the same way as English and
other languages do. Quantifying expressions have an adverbial behavior. The informant
uses the word si’irimat indistinctly to signify either nobody or never, as can be seen in
sentences (8) and (9) below. And in sentences (10) and (11), the word kandat ('much') is
used to express both quantification over entities (10) and over events (‘work a lot’) (11).
4
(8)
Isemboko
padni si'irimat
eremby
i-semboko
padni si'irimat
eremby
3-get.wet
NEG
ever
hammock
'Hammocks never get wet'
(9)
Iaokooto
padni si'irimat
y'it
i-a-okooto
padni si'irimat
y-'it
3-PASS-bite
NEG
ever
1S-son
'Nobody bit my son'
(10)
Kandat
nakahori
dibm
taso
kandat
Ø-naka-hot-i
dibm
taso
a.lot
3-DECL-go-FUT
tomorrow
man
'Many men will go tomorrow'
(11)
Pyrykiidn
jonso
pytim'and
kandat
tyym
pyry-kiit-n
jonso
pytim'and
kandat
tyym
ASSERT-EXIST-NFUT
woman
work
a.lot
SUB
'There are many women that work a lot'
Typologically Karitiana is closer to the Chinese-type languages, which are characterized
by the free occurrence of bare nouns as arguments and by the absence of number
inflection among other traits (cf. Chierchia 1998). Under Chierchia’s proposal, in this
type of language, lexical nouns denote kinds. Nevertheless, unlike the Chinese-type
languages, Karitiana makes no uses of classifiers.
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3.
Cumulativity in Karitiana
Based on work by Krifka 1986 and Landmann 1996, Kratzer 2005 argues that all basic
predicates are born cumulative. This means that verb stems, when intransitive, denote
both singular and plural events. And, when transitive, verb stems denote relations
between singular or plural events and singular or plural entities.
A predicate is cumulative if whenever it applies to two individuals in its denotation, it
also applies to their sum. A classical example is plurals. If Mary and John are students
and Carlos and Andrea are students, then Mary and John and Carlos and Andrea are
students. That is, any sum of students also belongs in the denotation of students. The
formal definition of cumulativity for nouns is presented in (12) and illustrated in (13)
for the noun stem student. The definition of cumulativity for verbal predicates is
presented in (14) and illustrated in (15) for the verb stem fall (cf. Kratzer 2001). Note
that Kratzer assumes an neo-davidsonian semantics for verbs, in that the external
argument is assumed not to be an argument of the verb. In the case of (15), fall is
analyzed as an ergative verb.
(12)
Cumulativity (properties of individuals):
λP<et>∀x∀y [ [P(x) & P(y)] → P(x+y)
(13)
[[√student’]] = {Mary, John,…, Mary+John,…,
Mary+John+Carlos+Andrea}
(14)
Cumulativity (properties of events):
λP<st>"∀e"∀e’ [ [P(e) & P(e’)] → P(e+e’) ] ]
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(15)
[[√fall’]] = {<Mary, fall1>, <John, fall 2>,…, <Mary+John,
fall1+ fall2>, …}
A consequence of the Cumulativity Universal is that lexical cumulativity should be
available in all natural languages at no cost. It should not depend on the particular
make-up of its Determiner Phrases (DPs) or Verbal Phrases (VPs) (c.f. Kratzer 2005).
Theoretically, the composition of an ergative verbal stem like fall and a nominal stem
like student, should result in an array of possible interpretations due to the cumulative
denotations of its constituents. The possible readings are listed in (16).
(16)
[[fall’]]([[student’]]) is true for:
•
“collective” falls: a group of students falling at the same time;
•
cumulative falls: some falling first, then others,…;
•
iterative falls: the same student(s) falling for a number of times.
Based on the Cumulative Universal, the null hypothesis to assume for Karitiana is that
both nouns and verbs have cumulative denotations. The fact that the language has no
number inflexion, no classifiers, nor determiners, and that bare nouns are numberneutral support that hypothesis as far as nouns are concerned.
The availability of iterative readings for any interpretation of future and non-future
sentences argues for the cumulativity of verbs in the language. The many possible
readings for sentence (17) illustrate the results of combining cumulative noun
denotations to cumulative verb denotations.
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(17)
Taso
naokyt
boroja
taso
∅-na-oky-t
boroja
man
3-DECL-kill-NFUT.
snake
'Men killed snakes'
'A man killed many snakes'
'A/some/the man/men killed snakes many times'
Literally: 'An unspecified number of men killed an unspecified number of snakes an
unspecified number of times'.
We will then begin our analysis of pluractionality in Karitiana by assuming that
cumulativity is a property of both its nouns and its verbs.
4.
Pluractionality in Karitiana
Somewhat suprisingly, Karitiana makes use of pluractional markers. Pluractional
markers in Karitiana are usually expressed by reduplication, and eventually by
supletion. The contrast between the verbal predicates in (18) and (19) illustrates the use
of reduplication in Karitiana. In (18), the two eggs were broken at the same time, that
is, there was only one breaking event, and no reduplication occurs. In (19), the
pluractional affix - reduplication - is used to express that more than one breaking event
has taken place.
(18)
Õwã nakakot
sypomp
opokakosypi
õwã
Ø-naka-kot- Ø
sypom-t
opokakosypi
kid
3-DECL-break-NFUT two-OBL
‘The kid broke two eggs’
Context: the two eggs at the same time
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egg
(19)
Õwã nakokonat
sypomp
opokakosypi
õwã
Ø-na-kot-kot-a-t
sypom-t
opokakosypi
kid
3-DECL-break-REDUPL-VERB-NFUT two-OBL
egg
‘The kid broke two eggs’
Context: one at a time
According to the literature, pluractional markers are morphemes, usually verbal affixes
that express a great variety of notions. They indicate that a multiplicity of events has
occurred, which may involve multiple participants, times or places (cf. Lasersohn 1995).
"These morphemes normally take the form of some sort of affix on the verb… ,
and expressing a broad range of notions typically including action by more than
one individual, temporally iterated action, and specially scattered action"
(Lasersohn 1995, p. 238).
Lasersohn 1995 defines the semantics of pluractional affixes as in (20). The definition
states that, when the a verb with pluractional morpheme applies to a plural event, the
singular predicate is true of every singular event that is part of that plural event.
Pluractional affixes then imply the occurrence of a plurality of events. The cardinality
of this plurality, according to Lasersohn, is to be determined by the context and is
usually taken to be ‘many’.
(20)
V-PA(E) ↔ ∀e ∈ E [V(e) & card (E) ≥ n]
where:
V: verb;
PA: pluractional marker;
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E: variable over sets of events;
e: variable over atomic events;
n: variable over the natural numbers.
We have claimed in the previous session that nouns and verbs in Karitiana have
cumulative denotations. This implies that cumulative readings should be available with
or without the occurrence of pluractional markers. That this is so is shown by sentences
(21) and (22), which apparently have the same readings with or without reduplication.
(21)
Õwã naakat
ipon
pikom
kyn
õwã
∅-na-aka-t
i-pon-∅
pikom
kyn
kid
3-DECL-AUX-NFUT
PART-shoot-NFUT
monkey
POS
‘The kid shot at the monkeys’
Context: more than one shooting
(22)
Pikom
kyn
naponpon
õwã
pikom
kyn
∅-na-pon-pon-∅
õwã
monkey
POS
3-DECL-shoot-REDUPL-∅
kid
‘The kid shot at the monkeys’
Context: more than one shooting
Sentence (23) is capable of expressing iteration of an action without the use of a
pluractional affix, whereas sentence (24) shows that iteration may co-occur with a
pluractional affix.
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(23)
Kandat
taso
naokyt
boroja
kandat
taso
∅-na-oky-t
boroja
a.lot
man
3-DECL-kill-NFUT
snake
'A/The man/Men killed snakes many times'
(24)
Kandat
nakahori
dibm
taso
kandat
Ø-naka-hot-i
dibm
taso
a.lot
3-DECL-go:PL-FUT
tomorrow
man
'Many men will go tomorrow'
Literally: 'Men will go a lot tomorrow'
Since the language already has cumulativity the following questions come up: (i) Why
would a language need pluractional affixes when it has cumulativity? (ii) What is the
role of pluractional affixes in the language? (iii) What would be the role of quantifiers
like many/many times in such a language?
We claim that pluractional affixes in Karitiana perform a pluralization operation on
cumulative verb denotations – they exclude atomic events from the denotation of verbs
(Ferreira 2005 for nouns and verbs, Müller 2000 for nouns). The formalization of this
proposal is laid out in (25) and illustrated for the predicate fall' repeated in (26). The
result of applying the pluralization operation to the predicate like fall' is that all
singular falling events are excluded from its denotation as illustrated in (27).
(25)
PL = λV [V(E) & non-atomic (E)]
E: variable over cumulative events.
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(26)
[fall’]] = {<Mary, fall1>, <John, fall 2>,<Mary+Carlos, fall3, …, <Mary+John,
fall1+fall2>, …, <Mary+John+Carlos, fall1+fall2+fall3>, …}
(27)
PL ([[fall']]) = {<Mary+John, fall1+ fall2>, …,
<Mary+John+Carlos, fall1+ fall2+fall3>, …}
Our hypothesis makes sense of the apparent puzzle posed the existence of
pluractionality in a language in which cumulativity is available in the syntactic
composition for both nominal and verbal predicates. The pluractional affix means the
same as the plural affix for nouns in many languages, that is, that atomic entities should
be excluded from the denotation of the predicate.
The hypothesis also explains why quantifiers like kandat ('much') are not redundant
with pluractional affixes. Contrary to traditional analyses of pluractional affixes, their
combination with verbal predicates is not taken to express the occurrence of many
events, but only more than one event.
The claim that the pluractional operation is a plural operation on events in Karitiana
makes some predictions. The first one is that pluractionality should be possible for any
sentence denoting two or more events and not only for a significant number of events.
That this is so, is shown by the use of reduplication in a sentence about two shooting
events.
(28)
Sympomp
nakaponpon
João
sojxaty
kyn
sympom-t
∅-naka-pon-pon-∅
João
sojxaty
kyn
two-OBL
3-DECL-shoot-REDUPL-NFUT João
boar
POS
'João shot twice at the boar'
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The second prediction that follows from our claim is that sentences denoting a singular
event should not reduplicate or mark pluralization via suppletion. Sentence (29) is
about one single leaving event, and no supletion is used, whereas supletion is used for
the same verb to express a plural event of leaving on sentence (30).Sentences (31) and
(32) also illustrate the prediction. Sentence (31) describes the occurrence of a single
collective event, and no reduplication is used, whereas sentence (32) is about many
events of giving fruit to João and accordingly the verb reduplicates. Sentence (33) is
explicitly about only one shooting event and, as expected, no pluractional marker is
used.
(29)
Myjopá
∅-naka-tat-i
dibm
Myjopá
3-DECL-go:SG-FUT
tomorrow
singular event
'Myjopá will leave tomorrow'
(30)
Dibm
nakahori
sypomp
õwã
dibm
∅-naka-tat-i
sypom-t
õwã
tomorrow
3-DECL-go:PL-FUT
two-OBL
kid
plural event
'Two kids will leave tomorrow'
(31)
Õwã nakahit
goojoty
João
õwã
∅-naka-hit-∅
goojo-ty
João
kid
3-DECL-give-NFUT
canoe-POS
João
singular event
'The kids gave a canoe to João'
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(32)
Õwã nakhithidn
kinda'oty
João
õwã
∅-naka-hit-hit-n
kinda’o-ty
João
kid
3-DECL-give-REDUPL-NFUT
fruit-POS
João
plural event
'The kids gave fruit to João'
(33)
Myhint
tapon João
napopit
sympomp
sojxaty
myhin-t
tapon João
Ø-na-popit-∅
sympom-t
sojxaty
One-OBL
shot
3-DECL-kill-NFUT
two
boar
João
‘With one shot, João killed two boars’
singular event
Another prediction that is born out is that sentences with distributive readings of
singular objects should not allow PL-affixes. This is so because one is distributing
singular event predicates, and there are no singular events in the denotation of
pluractional predicates. This prediction supported by the fact that the distributive
operator tamyry tamyry ('each…each') never co-occurs with pluractional affixes. The
use of the distributive operator in contexts that encompass singular objects is illustrated
by sentences (34) and (35).
(34)
Tamyry
tamyry
nakam'at
py'ejip
õwã
ta-myry
ta-myry
Ø-naka-m-‘a-t
py'ejip
õwã
3ANAPH-POS
3ANAPH- POS 3-DECL-CAUS-do-NFUT
homework
kid
'Each child made his homework'
(35)
Tamyry
tamyry
nakam'at
gooj
õwã
ta-myry
ta-myry
Ø-naka-m-‘a-t
gooj
õwã
3ANAPH- POS
3ANAPH- POS 3-DECL-CAUS-do-NFUT
canoe
kid
'Each child built a canoe for himself'
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In this section we have provided support to the claim that pluractional markers in
Karitiana effect a PLural operation on verb cumulative denotations.
5.
Conclusions
We have claimed that pluractional affixes in Karitiana are PLural operators on verbs:
they subtract singular events from cumulative verb denotations. The occurrence of
pluractional markers in the language indicates that the sentence is about two or more
events. Consequently, quantifiers like kandat (‘much’) are not redundant with
pluractional affixes.
The great array of readings that result from argument-predicate combinations in
Karitiana as illustrated by sentence (36) is due to nominal and verbal cumulativity. In
(37) we present the logical form for sentence (36) in order to illustrate how the
multiplicity of readings is achieved. Since both noun and verb denotations are
cumulative, the multiplicity of participants readings is a given possibility, and whether
there are one or more participants/events involved is decided upon context.
(36)
Kandat
taso
naokyt
boroja
kandat
taso
∅-na-oky-t
boroja
a.lot
man
3-DECL-kill-NFUT
snake
Literally: 'An unspecified number of men killed an unspecified number of snakes an
unspecified number of times'
(37)
∃E ∃X ∃Y [killing' (X,E) & snakes' (X) & agent' (Y,E) &
men (Y) & |E| = many]
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where: E, X, Y are variables over cumulative verb and noun denotations respectively.
We conclude by stating that the Cumulative Universal is supported by the Karitiana
data. The question of how Karitiana expresses phrasal cumulativity is left for further
research. According to Kratzer 2005, phrasal distributive operators (*-operators) are tied
to the presence of a plural trace on the DP. Since there are no plural markings on DPs
in Karitiana, the question to be tackled is how phrasal distributivity is realized in the
language.
An interesting typological question that remains to be pursued is the cross-linguistic
availability of the Plural/Pluractional semantic operation for both verbs and nouns
across languages.
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